Claudine Gay and the Limits of Social Engineering at Harvard
How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia?
The answer, I think, is this: Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university — blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas.
This resonates with my own experience in academia over the last decade. What was at first a slow drift became a sudden lurch toward the Left on so many cultural issues. Generally, that’s something I support. But with that lurch, all good sense and reason was thrown out the window.
I joined an MFA program where many people thought literature by white men, straight or not, was explicitly ‘less than.’ Where I was called a fascist for not introducing myself with pronouns, a white supremacist for merely editing a paper of a fellow student (yes!), a conservative because I argued that every person, regardless of their color and class and belief, is deserving of compassion.
Nevermind that the program chair — and his successor — were both white men. And really, really nevermind that the program chair was an admitted alcoholic known for his, um, terse and abrasive communication style. Now I’m not one to get on someone for being an asshole — pot, meet kettle — but I’m also not in charge of an academic program. (Some personality traits, believe it or not, should be disqualifying.) The performative outrage and yet complete inaction on issues of race and class is maddening. I was once told, and I’m not kidding here, that I was a “colonial apologist” because I would not give a land acknowledgement at the beginning of an in-person class, nevermind that I am leaving the land I own to the local tribe in my will.
What in the actual fuck.
What pains me most about this stuff is how much of a mockery it all makes of what I consider the most venerated institution in our culture. Academics are defined primarily by their ability to think, to make sense from nonsense, and yet they fully embraced the bullshit.
I’m as guilty as the rest — I fell for it too, at least for a while. I let my natural do-gooder tendencies take me beyond the realm of common sense. I’m both embarrassed by it and not — I really do think that much of this stuff comes from a place of good intentions — but we cannot abandon logic and reason in the name of wanting to do good. And especially not in academia.
Generative AI like Midjourney creates images full of stereotypes
A new Rest of World analysis shows that generative AI systems have tendencies toward bias, stereotypes, and reductionism when it comes to national identities, too.
Of course! Computers are all about broad data sets, not specific outliers.
This isn’t just AI, either. It’s in the algorithms behind Facebook and TikTok and YouTube, etc. We humans create these algorithms in our own image. Why do most YouTube “celebrities” look so similar? Why are so many female TikTok “stars” facsimiles of the Kardashians, themselves facsimiles of a standard of beauty now twenty years old?
These algorithms are built on millions of clicks, taps, scrolls, and hours watched. They’re extremely efficient at doing what old-school media has always done: flatten culture. After all, who were John Wayne and Frank Sinatra if not the embodiment — and perpetuation — of stereotypes?
What’s unnerving about social media and AI is that this flattening happens at terrific speed, which wasn’t possible in our analog culture.
Humans are not built for speed. We might be addicted to it, but our brains didn’t evolve to handle it.
The future looks terrifically unsettling.
What’s the Problem with Disability Studies and the
“Disability Rights” Movement?
Ramping up the rhetorical and social stakes leaves us incapable of calling bullshit bullshit. As is always the case, the rise of identity politics in disability discourse has created a state of constant emotionalism, threat, and fear. People are afraid to engage because they expect, correctly, that saying anything that contradicts the activist crowd will simply result in them being called bigots. This causes problems all over our debates, but appears most glaring when it comes to the stupidest issues. For example, despite dogged insistence to the contrary, it is not the case that there has been a sudden massive increase in the prevalence of late-onset Tourette’s syndrome among adolescent women with TikTok accounts. There has not been some sort of incredible change to the epidemiology of Tourette’s, and essentially no one really believes that there has been. Instead, a lot of young woman started pretending to have Tourette’s syndrome out of a desire to belong and to differentiate themselves from their peers in the marketplace of attention, and as they were rewarded in that marketplace others responded by doing the same thing. Similarly, there has not been a sudden increase in dissociative identity disorder among very-online adolescent women, given that DID is a controversial diagnosis and the disorder known for its extreme rarity. Pretending to have multiple personalities is fun and edgy so some teenagers have done it a lot recently.
Kids do dumb things and I’m not particularly mad about it. I do, however, think that if it goes unchecked this stuff could have serious negative consequences for how our culture views mental illness. What’s striking is how scared many people seem to be about calling this obvious bullshit out as obvious bullshit. When I talk about this, I press and probe and ask people if any of it passes the smell test. And just about nobody says “Yes, it’s credible that there are more authentic cases of dissociative identity disorder in my TikTok feed than there have been confirmed cases in medical history.” Nobody’s that dumb. But they’re unwilling to just say, yeah, that’s bullshit. They ummm and they uhhhh and they tiptoe around and they dance, and they do so because they’ve absorbed the attitude that criticizing anyone’s specific claims to disability means that you’re somehow callous towards disability in general. They also won’t call bullshit on bullshit because they’re afraid of being tarred with the “ableism” accusation. The whole thing makes it harder for us to think and talk intelligently about how to best accommodate disability in our society.
This resonates. In my masters program, this is all terrifically common. I’ve been afraid to call out bullshit when I see it precisely before I’m afraid of being called out as ‘callous.’ More worryingly, I’ve seen professors and administrators — at multiple universities — be cowed into silence, afraid the DEI office might come from their job should they speak out.
To say this is depressing is an understatement. Academia should be the one institution in American life immune from irrationality, from illiberalism. And yet it’s embraced them with abandon as students, now ‘customers’ in a capitalist model, have become empowered by social media.
The young, myself included, don’t always know best, and it hurts watching people that know better say nothing.
How Race Categories on U.S. Census Forms Have Evolved
The reality of categorizing people with distinct labels has never been simple.
People with identical lineage may choose different boxes, and the same person may choose different boxes in different years. Former President Barack Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a Black man from Kenya, for example, marked himself as “Black,” even when checking more than one race was an option.
Historically, some edits to census race boxes reflected changes in policy or public sentiment. As the nation’s laws on slavery shifted, the census began phasing out the counting of enslaved people and instead introduced new terms to define the Black population.
Fascinating.
I’ve long struggled with categorization, both self- and not. It’s no wonder we humans attempt to categorize (it is, after all, the basis for all language), but when we attempt to categorize another person, that’s when it all goes to hell.
Recently, the term ‘LGBTQ’ (or ‘LGBTQIA+,’ if you’re feeling radically inclusive) has come into fashion. I hate it. No, I loathe it. As a gay man, my experience has little in common with that of a trans person or someone who is “questioning.” I’m not questioning anything, so why am I grouped with those folks?
I see the LGBTQ label as insulting, created by a hetero-majority that can’t be bothered remembering the specifics of my lived experience. Instead, we’re all just thrown into this alphabet soup of ‘otherness.’
The fight over what’s real (and what’s not) on dissociative identity disorder TikTok
It was TikTok, in Robinson’s eyes, that was driving the sudden rise in pediatric DID referrals. “It’s possible that social media is revealing new ways for individuals with genuine DID to express themselves,” he said in his lecture. But he also issued a warning: “however, it’s also very possible that social media and internet trends are contributing to increased DID claims that are not genuine.” That is, people claiming to have DID might be mistaken, confused, or simply faking it.
Robinson — a member of McLean Hospital’s trauma research program, which delivers specialized care to people with dissociative disorders — said he could not accurately diagnose anyone through social media at the outset of his talk. Still, he used TikToks to illustrate his points. He started with a clip of a rainbow-haired DID system purchasing a personalized cake to celebrate their official DID diagnosis, something Robinson thought was “surprising,” as it contrasted with the typically “hidden” nature of the disorder. He shared footage of a system cycling through eight elaborate neon outfits — complete with wigs and cat-like paws — attributed to their different alters, “overt changes” of appearance that Robinson felt were “not characteristic” of the DID patients clinicians see each day.
Kraft — whose alters include JA, a man-hating lesbian, and Kaleb, a hat-loving teenage boy — says Robinson’s presentation was distressing to her system and the other influencers he featured, who faced waves of abuse off the back of his lecture. “I have screenshots of someone coming onto my page to tell someone they shouldn’t believe me because this doctor says I’m faking,” she says. “People were given a license to hate.”
DID creators and their fans lashed out at Robinson in response. They felt the lecture discredited their experiences and further entrenched stigma against people with the disorder. Actress AnnaLynne McCord, who came out as a DID system in 2021, called the lecture “asinine” and “crazy.” Systems began to “review bomb” McLean Hospital, where Robinson works, leaving comments on Google about the “unethical” and “disgusting’ presentation. A petition was circulated calling for a “formal apology” and “reparations” from McLean Hospital as well as a wide range of trauma experts; another petition called for Robinson’s license to be revoked.
In the end, McLean removed all videos of Robinson’s lecture from its owned channels.
I’ve long suspected that many things like this are functions of social media. My experience of human nature is that many people will do absolutely anything for attention, and what is social media if not a tool designed explicitly to garner attention? (You only once have to be in a gay bar when a bachelorette party walks in to realize people love to co-opt identities that make them feel special, and will be absolutely shameless about doing so.)
Anecdotally, this is rampant in high schools. Teachers, kids, parents… I’ve had countless of each say, “yeah, lots of girls say they’re queer or trans to get attention.” Yet no one seems to say this in public for fear of reprisal.
Our culture has lost the ability to talk in nuance, so I feel the need to explicitly say: this does not mean I think trans people or people with DID don’t exist. They do, and have a right to, just the same as all of us.
I’m merely skeptical of the numbers we currently see on or infer from social media. I resent any wing of culture that says my skepticism, a hallmark of liberalism, is somehow “hateful” or “invalidating.”
Beware of anyone that says skepticism is “hateful.” They’re trying to shut down critical thought and conversation, not encourage it.
I often wonder where I fit in this world.
These days, it seems both obvious and painfully reductive to start with my list of identities, some of which I have created for myself, others that have been placed upon me — some of which I claim, others that I reject.
I’m a white man in my mid-30s. Millennial. Cis. Educated, with nearly two masters programs under my belt. (One I didn’t finish and another I’m mid-way through…and unsure about.) I was born in a small rural town in a Midwestern red state, and now I live in a small rural town in a Western blue one. I’m gay. I’m an atheist. A Star Wars and Star Trek fan. Raised as an only child, though I have two half-brothers. I’m a landowner, a homeowner, a registered independent (lowercase ‘i’). I’m partnered, though that word makes me uncomfortable, as does commitment. I used be a winter person, and now I’m firmly in the summer camp. I’m a dog person with a soft spot for the older, bigger ones. I prefer the mountains, not the ocean.
If you were to ask all but my closest friends and family, you’d undoubtedly get a salad of those identities. All those things go a long way to defining me, yet none do so accurately or completely. I’m many things to many people, myself included.
Most defining, in my experience, has been my sexual orientation. I grew up in a time and place where being gay was not common or accepted, and as I came into my adolescence, I realized that I was unlike everyone I knew, but I didn’t quite know how. I found myself thinking of other boys in my class in a way no one else seemed to. Most of my male friends talked about girls the way I thought about boys. It wasn’t long into high school that I found myself printing off Backstreet Boys fanfic from the newly-installed internet, reading the pages at night under the blanket. On the walk to the bus the next morning, I would take the pages and burn them in the woods near my house, fearful I’d be discovered.
I didn’t come out until two years into college, at least not to the people that mattered most: my parents. I had been admitted to a top-20 university after having spent high school obsessed with class rank and academic success. A year-and-a-half in, I had what can only be described as an emotional breakdown, and I moved home. I started therapy, and after a month or two and many hours of practicing exactly what I was going to say, I came out to my mom. A month or two later, I came out to my dad. They were unexpectedly kind and loving, though in hindsight it wasn’t unexpected at all. I was afraid to come out to them, but I had been blind to an obvious truth: that my parents are good, kind, loving people, and were never going to be anything but accepting.
But this didn’t make my adolescence any more pleasant. I had been riddled with fear and internalized homophobia for so long that it took many years after I came out to deal with that fear. I moved around a lot. First Nashville, then Chicago, then Missoula, then Portland. I’m indebted to each place for different reasons, but I came of age in Missoula. I turned 21 in Missoula. I had moved there on a whim (a running theme in my life) and fell in love with its remoteness. Being so far from any major city, I felt both independent and secluded, about to create and play with and assert my identities for the first time. Though I lived there for only three years, it feels as though I lived a lot more than that in three year’s time. To this day, my closest adult friends are people from that period in my life.
In Missoula, I was openly gay for the first time, and it was a wild time to be. The late 2000s were a heady time — my own political awareness had started to assert itself. George W. Bush was president, the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan were in full swing, and memories of being gay in the rural Midwest were still fresh. While I was politically active, I was politically aware. I remember the day of Obama’s election, of crying tears of joy at the dive bar, drunk with a hundred other young people, all of us elated at the symbolism of his election. The world felt wide open and new, and above all, safe.
I moved to Portland, Oregon not long after, beckoned by its unspoken and illicit promises of a liberal utopia, of radical acceptance. I moved there the year Portlandia debuted, and I was awash in good vibes, in comfort. I enrolled in graduate school, walking several miles through the city to class each day. I made friends, went out drinking at least three nights a week, and had far too much fun. I was headstrong. I slept around. Sometimes a few men each week. I was open with my sexuality, asking for what I thought I wanted, asking to try new things with new people. I played. I loved every minute of it.
But three years went by, and I became unhappy. I was “living the life,” as they say. I had a little apartment to myself, a cat, some close friends. But underneath it all, I was miserable. How could I have all these things yet somehow be so unhappy?
I’ll save the next part of my life for another time, but thanks to the sudden intervention of a new friend, I moved away from Portland, away from a large-ish American city. I moved to a rural town in the mountains. No more traffic, no more driving an hour to go on a hike. I made new friends, I slept with more men in more adventurous places. I took up mountain biking, kayaking, canoeing. I got a dog, then another, then another. I bought some land and lived out of a tent on that land for a few years. I grew weary of tent living, so I bought a small home in another town, a town 200 miles from the nearest friend. I work from home, so I’m able to live anywhere, and I had long admired this place. Just a few days after moving into my 130-year-old rental, I made an offer on the place. Eight months later, the deal closed, and I was now a homeowner in a very remote town where I knew no one.
I set about getting involved, going to city council meetings and joining the board of a local medical nonprofit. I made friends. Months passed. Small-town politics caught up with me, and I left the board. People I had considered friends — my only friends in town — turned out to be anything but. I was alone.
I kept at it. I shoveled my neighbors’ sidewalks. I mowed their lawns. I introduced myself to people I didn’t know, thrusting out my hand as I made direct eye contact. I changed the way I spoke, however subtly. I was no longer so quick to smile or wave. I spoke quieter, in fewer words, less effusively. I became quieter. I steeled myself to life here, a town with several churches just a few blocks from my house. I took care of my lawn, painted my garage, repaired the fence. Slowly, I became part of the fabric of this town, however reserved I might be.
Now here I am.
Some days, I wonder how this all happened. There’s no reason for me to be here — I can work from anywhere — so why am I here?
Politically, I’m unlike most people in my town. They’re largely conservative, and I’m not. Politically, I’m unlike most people in, say, Portland, too. Much of my unhappiness living in Portland was because everyone thought, broadly, as I did. I was (and remain) liberal, but while there was a modicum of diversity in the city, there wasn’t much diversity of thought. Many of the problems facing Portland today — rampant crime chief among them — were obvious a decade ago.
Fundamentally, people here and people there seem ignorant of human nature. People here are far too angry, too fearful of change. Some of that is justified, but fear and anger won’t stop change from happening, nor will it ingratiate you to others. People there move far too quickly and, in a strange turn of events, have become far too angry. My liberal city friends have no compunctions about putting down rural people, insulting their intelligence and voting record. I used to think that liberal people knew better. Specifically, I thought liberal people used to be more compassionate, more understanding, more forgiving. It was was attracted me to that side of things to begin with. But that no longer holds true.
I no longer feel at home around many of my more liberal friends. The casual nature of their derision, the way they look down at rural or conservative people, it all feels too familiar. It was me, not long ago. I was as shocked as anyone by Trump’s election, sinking into tremendous despair for many years after. But as easy as it would be to blame his election on the ignorance or hatred of some folks, I realized that, like everything in the world, nothing is that simple.
Moving out here, I’ve been moved by the plight of rural poverty and the populism it fuels. Alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, food insecurity… Not that these things don’t occur in cities, but the entrenchment of these issues out here is remarkable. Four years of living in this town have shown me that many people are right to be angry, right to feel that they’ve been left behind. Close friends’ remarks about people in towns like mine continue to take me by surprise, continue to remind me that many of my friends are the embodiment of what people here have grown to resent: an educated liberal that long ago left her own small town behind to move to a big city, only looking back with disdain.
My small town had three mills — flour, lumber, paper — at the start of the 1980s. Those industries have long since disappeared, the jobs moved overseas. The remaining business have dried up, no longer able to make a go of it. The pharmacy, the lumber yard, the hotel. They’ve all disappeared. Full of interesting old buildings, main street now sits largely empty.
It’s a strange sight to behold. It’s a stranger thing to come to terms with, to tacitly accept. As I walk to the post office, I pass many empty buildings, most of which are owned by wealthy people in other parts of the country. Their vacancy has become mundane, but to someone only fifty years ago, it would have been unrecognizable.
So many towns in America have been hollowed out. What people love about small towns has threatened to be hollowed out, too. Jobs and a sense of confidence in the future have disappeared, and drugs and alcohol and religion have filled in the vacuum. Shame and regret and anger are palpable — and understandable. I’ve yet to find a secular way to express this sentiment so succinctly, but there but for the grace of god go I.
And here I am.
Living in a small town.
Most days, I have to actively stave off the creeping mistrust I feel for those around me. I am, after all, assuming a lot about them, making judgments. I know that if I were to get to know them, I would find in me the compassion to do everything I could to help alleviate their suffering. But this position takes work and, if I’m honest, a little distance. I do not trust most people here to see me as their equal, and this weighs heavily on my mind.
Yet this is home, by choice.
And each day, I have to choose to be open and kind. And to feel as though I did when I was younger, to feel as though I need to defend, however subtly, my very existence? It’s exhausting.
And now I see some of the same intolerance from my friends, all of whom I know mean well. All of whom I know have goodness in their hearts. All of whom should know better.
I no longer feel at home on the political left. I never felt at home on the political right. I never felt at home in the midwest, and I don’t think I feel at home here.
I don’t know of a place where I do feel at home, and the weight of it sits heavy on my shoulders.